joe's reviews

This place is great for bachelor parties! It's an indoor paintball facility and I liked the setup. They have lots of different rooms and objects throughout so there's plenty of variation. They also had us play lots of types of games (instead of just capture the flag) which kept things interesting.

I don't know if there's anything much funner than shooting your friends. It is much better than getting repeatedly shot by 12 year olds and one of their dads who is a police officer, which most certainly did not happen to me..

I love whitewater rafting and I think All-Outdoors is a great choice. They have a lot of different rivers of varying difficulty/chances-of-falling-into-the-river-and-drowning. Our trip with them went off without a hitch. Our guide was funny and got us through the river unscathed.

They have some interesting multi-day trips if you're interested in that as well.

I only come here to play one game - Jurassic Park: Lost World. I've only beaten it once and it cost us $20 and I missed my flight to do it. I could see a pretty good bachelor party happening here as there are plenty of options for entertainment: beer, food, pool, video games. The only problem with video games is that you may have to split up.

Really beautiful grounds. Lots of open space and grass and the mansion looks nice in the background. I would come here for pictures.

The inside ballrooms are fairly plain so you would have to probably bring in your own decor if you want to spruce things up a bit. However, the plus is that they're very large and have a lot of room.

I kind of like the food here, but that could just be me. The decor is very "Chinese restaurant" if you know what I mean. Probably not the greatest place for a reception, but I could see it being a pretty good place for a rehearsal dinner where decor might not be as big of an issue.

I came with my FI here to see some of the dresses and offer my "opinions" which I'm sure were *carefully* taken into consideration by her. It was a preliminary trip (one of many she would take) so we figured it would be ok if I saw her in the dresses since she probably wouldn't pick them anyway.

A lady named Jean helped her try on dresses. I thought she was really nice and gave good advice (but what do I know?). My only complaint is that the rooms are kind of cramped.

The view here is awesome. You have a great view of the Bay, that triangular building (sorry, don't know what it's called), and both bridges. It's the best view I've seen in the city.

While the view outside is unparalleled, what's inside the Carnelian Room is not as impressive. We had dinner here and the food was just mediocre. I had a steak and my FI had the fish. The steak was ok, but her fish was better left uneaten. I found the host and waiters to be somewhat condescending. Maybe they're trying to create a high class atmosphere, but I would rather have someone who's friendly.

I think it would be a good setting for a rehearsal dinner if you're willing to spring for $50-$60/person and it would be ok for an intimate wedding.

UPDATE:
We ended up having our rehearsal dinner here and it was great! We reserved the Belvedere Room and we had plenty of space for our 50 guests. The view was spectacular, especially at night. For food, we just had appetizers, fruits, water and soda. The appetizers were pretty good and I recommend this approach instead of a sit down meal for Carnelian Room b/c (as I noted earlier) the sit-down food is just mediocre. The cost came out to about $65 / person.

One note on food quantities: I initially ordered 35 of the 10-piece appetizer packages, one fruit platter, and one vegetable platter and that wasn't enough food. The vegetable platter was basically untouched. I had expected the veggie platter to have roasted peppers and the like, but it was basically raw vegetables and not particularly appetizing (although very healthy!). The fruit platter was pretty good and about half of it was eaten. I had to order 10 more of the appetizer packages for there to be enough food. So, stick with about 1 appetizer package per person and 1 fruit platter and you should be good.

Overall, I thought Carnelian was a really classy setting for a rehearsal dinner and I had a great time!

Well, I'm a sucker for a free meal so the free lunch you get for coming in is a good start =). It's right next to the Bay so that's kind of cool. It's located in Jack London Square so you can walk around the pier.

I don't know though, when I was walking around inside the restaurant, I felt like if I had my wedding there, it wouldn't have felt special. I wish the windows were bigger, too so that more sunlight could come in and you could get even more of a view of the bay.

They do have an interesting outdoor space that fits 350(?) people or so. That was far too big to for our party, but I thought it was cooler than the rooms inside.

Laurent was extremely responsive in my emails with him. We had contacted him initially about booking him for our date, but didn't make a decision. A couple weeks later, he let us know that someone else wanted our date and gave us a weekend to figure out if we wanted to book him. I thought that was very courteous of him and fair for all involved. We ended up not booking him because we wanted a slightly different style, but I thought he sounded great. You can see a bunch of his videos on YouTube if you want a preview. I can't give him 5 stars since I didn't actually book him, but my guess is he would be a 5 star choice.

Thomas Hughes seems to be a pretty safe choice as your videographer. They have many videographers and it seems like it's run like a normal company with many people in charge of different areas (cameramen, sales, editing, etc.) as opposed to your typical 1 or 2 person operation. The sales people are responsive and we got many demos to watch. They were flexible on the terms. We met our videographer Nick in person and I thought he was a nice, honest guy who would do a good job.

UPDATE:
We haven't gotten our video yet, but I just wanted to write my impression of them during the wedding. We had 2 videographers for both the ceremony and reception. They were not invasive and I only noticed them a couple times here and there. They were on time and warned us before they were going to leave. Obviously, the final video is the important part, but I'm happy with their professionalism during the wedding.